Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
The world is ending, and we’re all responsible. The greedy industrialists and we rabid consumers keep building factories and wasting more natural resources. We are filling the skies with carbon dioxide and pollutants, causing temperatures to rise around the world. The polar ice caps are melting, leading to tsunamis and further warming. Dogs and cats living together! The end of life as we know it!
At least, those are the dire warnings we’ve all been reading for the last twenty years and more. But what if they’re all wrong? What if the warming trend is just a natural cycle, just as Earth has gone through many times before? What if our factories, automobile exhaust, and love of one-use packaging are completely unrelated to the issue of global warming? What if it isn’t a real problem, or at least not one we can solve?
Today (October 15, 2009) is Blog Action Day and this year’s topic is Global Warming. This got us to thinking. We have a really good – and highly intelligent – friend who argues persuasively that “global warming” is a myth. He points out that the world has always had cycles of warmer and cooler climates and that there is no real proof that our industrial society is contributing to the current warming trend. It may well be that Earth is not so much heating up as emerging from a mini Ice Age into a more normal pattern.
The Principle of the Least Mistake
Another friend of ours loves to use the phrase, “The Principle of the Least Mistake.” The idea is that any time you can “take out cheap insurance”, you should. For example, you are going on a car trip through the desert. Your car is in good condition and well maintained, and you don’t expect any problems, but you take a few gallons of water with you anyway. This action has a cost – You had to go through some effort to pack something you don’t expect to need – but the reward if you do need it might literally be your life. You pay a small cost rather than have a small chance of suffering a major loss.
Conserving, recycling, and minimizing our “carbon footprint” are least mistake actions. Each takes some effort and might not make a big dent on global warming, but a lot of such small actions taken by many people could prevent a big mistake. And, as with many least mistake actions, they can pay unexpected dividends. California is banning incandescent bulbs. Replacing them with compact fluorescent or LED lights will cost us money in the short run, but the long-term benefits include longer life for the bulb and less power consumption. We’ll all win in the long run even if we aren’t helping to save the world.
It Can’t Hurt
There are a lot of small things you can do that might or might not help global warming… but could make your life better regardless:
- Avoid packaged foods. Eat more fresh vegetables and other simple foods. The cost: You may have to shop more often. Preparation will take longer. The benefits: Less waste (from packaging). You’ll save money. Fresh food tastes better and your health and energy level will likely improve.
- Refill water bottles at the store rather than buying new ones each time you run out. Or install a water filter so you don’t need to buy bottled water. The first approach is a pain, but it will save you money. The second has an up-front cost, but will save you time and possibly money in the long run. And you won’t have to deal with all those empties.
- By the way, drink water, not soda. More and more research is showing how terrible sugar is for our bodies. The artificial sweeteners are probably safer, but they haven’t been around long enough for us to be sure about that. Learn to love tea (we make it a pot at a time with a single teabag) or the freshness of plain water. You’ll eliminate the wasted cans and bottles and do your body a favor.
- Next time you trade in your car, get a fuel-efficient model. If you can, take public transportation. Even better – Ride a bike. The cost – You may have to wait for a bus and stand in a crowd. You may have to walk at each end. On your bike, you will constantly be in danger from careless drivers. Oh, but the benefits! You will save a fortune. You’ll never have to worry about finding a parking space. That extra walking – or bike riding – will improve your strength, energy, and general health. So what if global warming isn’t caused by hydrocarbon emissions? You’ll have made your own life better.
Keep Your Cool
Here’s the thing – Even if you disagree with someone’s main thesis, that doesn’t mean you can’t listen to the rest of what they have to say. There may be reasonable doubt about the causes of global warming, the best way to handle health care, and many other issues. But that doesn’t mean that someone who disagrees with us on the major points has nothing valuable to say. I’ve heard some great ideas from people all across the political spectrum.
In the case of global warming, we have a “least mistake” situation. If it’s an inevitable, natural climate change, then perhaps there’s nothing we can do about it except learn to live in a hotter environment. But if we’re making it worse with our industry and personal habits, why not take out a little insurance? Do what you can to reduce your use of energy and encourage your friends and neighbors to do the same. The costs are small compared to the potential benefits… and you may find you’re making your life better even if the theories of global warming are completely wrong.
Be one of the cool people. You know the mantra – “Reduce, Recycle, Reuse.” What can it hurt?
Tags: Blog Action Day, Climate Change, Global Warming
Posted in Featured, Life Advice | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
The audience waits impatiently for the curtains to open. The lead singer may have come down with laryngitis, one of the dancers has broken a leg, and the drummer is a victim of spontaneous combustion. But somehow the show must go on.
Last week saw the Final of this year’s Britain’s Got Talent competition. Having – like many people – become fascinated with the show after hearing Susan Boyle sing “Dream a Dream”, I devoured all of the semifinal and final episodes on YouTube. I came away with a new appreciation of the varieties of talent and some thoughts about performing under extreme pressure.
“In My Life”
Music has always been a big part of my life. My father had done some work for Heathkit and part of his payment was a very fancy stereo amplifier. He built it into a hi-fi music system with speakers in three rooms on the ground floor of our house in Pennsylvania. We had a wide selection of 33’s, 45’s, and even some 78’s with classical and pop music. My older brother and sister loved the Beatles and Herman’s Hermits, so I sang along with the radio and records. I even occasionally got to tag along when they went to a concert.
I had no formal music training in grade school except for a couple of short-lived classes in trombone and guitar. My first real exposure to music theory was my 8th grade music class. I remember that the teacher would sometimes have us arrange our chairs in a circle and listen to music that ranged from classical to the electronic music of Edgar Varèse. I also sang in a chorus even though my sight-reading ability was close to non-existent.
That was the beginning and end of my music career, as I flunked the audition to the high school choir – My voice was changing at the time and kept cracking. They also expected a certain minimum of music training – “Sing America the Beautiful. What key would you like?” “Uh, I don’t know; in what key do you usually do it?” That incident shook my confidence, and for years I avoided singing anything in public. The show went on without me.
“All the World’s a Stage”
That changed when my brother visited me in Santa Barbara for the Old Time Fiddler’s Competition. Barry had shared his folksong notebook with me, and encouraged me to enter the old-time singing contest. I chose “Two Brothers”, a Child Ballad, and Barry accompanied me on fiddle. I went up on the stage in front of hundreds of old-time music fans and somehow managed to focus on the performance instead of my stage fright. For those few minutes, I became the song.
When the dust had settled, I placed second in the beginning singer category. Not much of an accomplishment, perhaps, but to me it was like the Cowardly Lion’s medal of courage in The Wizard of Oz. I had been acknowledged for the first time in my life as a real singer, and even had the certificate to prove it. That award was a sort of magical armor I could don when someone criticized my singing – I knew that some people appreciated my voice.
Stepping onto a stage in front of a live audience is enormously stressful. Even seasoned performers admit to getting stage fright before every performance. Each finds a way to cope with the pressure, because they know that the show must go on. They find a way to draw energy from the audience and to involve them in the performance instead of fearing them.
Foggy Mountain Breakdown
Sometimes the pressure can be too much. One of the talented contenders on this year’s Britain’s Got Talent finals was Hollie Steel, but she almost didn’t get a chance to compete there. During her semi-final performance, she made a mistake, couldn’t get back on track, and broke down in tears. Surprisingly, Simon Cowell – the “tough judge” on the show – convinced the producers to let Hollie come back later on the show to try again. The second time around, she gave a nearly flawless performance, and the judges and audience were impressed by her ability to bounce back from disaster. Did I mention that Hollie is 10 years old?
I helped out at a coffeehouse for a while in my teens. One regular performer was folk/blues musician Norm Deaver. Norm gave me this tip on performing – “If you make a mistake or forget the words of a song, just keep going. The audience will probably never know the difference, but they will spot it instantly if you stop or remark on your error.” Even when a judge “buzzes you”, keep going. You won’t win any performance points by giving up or becoming angry.
The show must go on. “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” Sometimes life sucks, and everything seems to go wrong, but you win no points with the jury by complaining or being angry about it. You just have to find a way to play the instruments you have on stage with you. Wishing you had a Stradivarius isn’t going to improve your performance on a student violin; imagining that you are playing a Strad just might. Practicing and studying a lot before you go on stage almost certainly will help.
“Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad”
Somewhere I have a “Book of Seconds”. It’s all about the second person to run a 4-minute mile, the second man on the moon, and so on. The point was that we all love a winner, and nobody remembers who came in second. Nike had the ad campaign that, “Second place is the first loser.”
Lori and I think that attitude sucks, is destructive, and doesn’t match up with the things that are important in life. I love to come in first at bridge, but I don’t measure my own performance that way. The question I always ask myself is, “Did I play my best today? Did I put everything I can into the game?” If the answer is “No,” then I think about what I need to work on. Sometimes I play my best and come in 2nd or 3rd because someone did even better.
But you know what? Second place is damn good. So is third. You can have a very successful and fulfilling life without ever becoming Number One in anything. Very few professional athletes are #1 all the time. A .300 batting average is considered excellent, even spectacular – That’s more than 2 outs for every hit. A professional bowler or poker player who wins one tournament in twenty is rightly considered to have a great career.
Susan Boyle did not end up winning this year’s “Britain’s Got Talent.” She gave this breathtaking performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” in the Final, but came in second to Diversity, a dance group. News reports talked about how Diversity had “beaten Susan Boyle into second place.”
Well, Diversity was amazing, and they deservedly won, but Ms. Boyle most assuredly did not lose. She has a recording contract with Simon Cowell’s record company, will be performing on the West End, and is getting the opportunity to sing with her idol, Elaine Paige. The media world has a much better idea of how to present and promote singers than dancers, and Susan Boyle’s future is assured… as far as she decides to take it. She will sing, make records, and people will buy them.
In third place was 39-year-old music teacher Julian Smith with this inspiring performance on saxophone. And you know what? Mr. Smith is not the “second loser”. He’s the third winner! After wowing millions with his beautiful saxophone performances, he will certainly get a chance to fulfill his dreams of signing a record contract and getting many more chances to perform his music in front of live audiences.
Life is exactly the same way. We put on a lot of “performances” every day, from going to work or school to paying bills to going out with friends. Many – perhaps most – people drift through these activities and their lives. Exceptional people treat everything they do as a performance. They think and plan ahead, and when the moments of action arrive, they go all-out to do their best at whatever they are doing – work, leisure, and relationships.
I don’t mean to say that you have to become stressed about upcoming events. But you will have more fun if you prepare for them. Going to Disneyland? Make sure you have your tickets and hotel reservation, pack a day or two in advance so you don’t forget the sunscreen, and get to the airport on time. You’ll find you have much less stress in your life because you know you’re prepared. Performing a solo piano recital at Carnegie Hall? Same thing, isn’t it?
Different Strokes
Diversity picked the right time to peak, putting on this wonderful, unique, and energetic Final performance. It came down to the quality of the final performances and the question of how the British people wanted to be represented in front of the Queen. Susan Boyle would have sung wonderfully, but we are used to hearing wonderful singers on the radio or our iPods all the time.
Diversity’s name was perfect – They are a diverse troupe of street dancers ranging in age from 12 to 25 and of multiple ethnic backgrounds. I think the viewers chose really well in that their appearance in front of the Queen will be a message, that Great Britain is made up of many diverse ethnic groups, and that when they work together, amazing things can happen.
By the way, there was another terrific street dance group in the BGT finals. Flawless lived up to their name in the semi-final with this routine, and I think would have had a very good chance of winning the entire competition if the vote had taken place then. Lori and I certainly would have voted for them.
However, their performance in the Final wasn’t quite as tight. If Diversity promoted the message that, “We’re all part of what makes Britain Great,” the Flawless final seemed to say, “We’re really good, but we’re different from you.” Diversity definitely projected the better message to portray before the Queen.
“It All Comes Down to You”
In the end, everything comes down to the Final. The best performers that day won the show. But everyone else won just by making it that far. They all had a wonderful opportunity to showcase their talents to millions of people all around the world. Their performances are recorded and will be seen for a long time on YouTube and other Internet sites. And many of them will go on to have successful show business careers.
We each have some pretty amazing opportunities too. We get to try out in the various auditions of life every day. When we find the magic, and bring our hearts and souls (not to mention lots and lots of practice) into the performance, sometimes we get to move on to the next stage. Every once in a while, there’s a Final, where we really get to show off our stuff. And just as on “Britain’s Got Talent,” Life’s Finals don’t come down to a single winner and a bunch of losers. Just to be there and to do the best we can on that day – Those brief moments in the sun should be joyous… for you and for your “audience”.
The show will go on!
Tags: Life Advice, Music
Posted in Featured, Life Advice | No Comments »
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Moving the World
The Internet is abuzz with the tale of Susan Boyle, 47-year-old singing sensation who took the “Britain’s Got Talent” TV show by storm a couple of weeks ago. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, Miss Boyle appeared on stage as an unemployed, overweight, middle-aged woman with frizzy hair. Then she sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables so beautifully that the audience and judges were enthralled.
The story here isn’t about a talent show, or that a singer gave a great performance. It’s about reaching for the stars, building on the unique talent we each have, and breaking through barriers. It’s also about the prejudices and stereotypes we hold, and getting beyond them to recognize value in others of all types. In this music video world, we tend to assume that great singers are also young and physically beautiful. What a strange idea!
You see, Miss Boyle is not the first out-of-type singer to be successful, and far from the oldest. If she had started her music career at 20, nobody would be surprised if she were still singing professionally at 50. And while appearance matters in pop music, it’s less important in other branches. Luciano Pavarotti did not exactly look like Orlando Bloom, but he sang before a lot of packed houses.
The judges on Britain’s Got Talent showed astonishment at Susan Boyle’s appearance, but they didn’t have to go back far to find a similar case. The overall 2007 winner of the competition was Paul Potts, a round-faced, ordinary-looking cell phone salesman. He sang an operatic solo with such clarity and depth that his performance made even opera haters sit up and listen. Mr. Potts has since released a CD that sold over 2 million copies. Clearly the voice matters much more than appearance… of course, the publicity value of winning a televised competition was also essential to his success.
Overnight Wonders?
So who are these incredible phenomena, Susan Boyle and Paul Potts? Did they spring forth, like Venus from the ocean, to suddenly have the voices of angels?
Of course not! Each of them worked for years at their craft and polished their innate talents until they were ready to perform their songs in front of millions. According to Wikipedia, “Potts first sang opera in 1999 in a karaoke competition, dressed as Luciano Pavarotti. That same year, he appeared in the Michael Barrymore talent show My Kind of Music. Although he did not take first place, he won £8,000 — enough to help pay for vocal lessons in Italy, during which he was selected to perform in front of singers Pavarotti and Katia Ricciarelli.”
Miss Boyle was also musically active 10 years ago – “In 1999, Boyle used “all her savings” to pay for a professionally cut demo tape, which she later sent to record companies, radio talent competitions, local and national TV and which has now been released on the Internet. It consisted of “Cry Me a River” and her version of “Killing Me Softly with His Song”.” Susan performed in benefit concerts, but remained unnoticed.
These talented singers did not come out of nowhere and suddenly learn to sing. They honed their talents over many years, then were catapulted into the international spotlight by their opportunities on the talent show and the viral nature of Internet “word of web”.
Most importantly, they persisted in the face of tremendous challenges. Susan’s father died about 15 years ago and she was the caregiver for her mother until her mother’s death in 2007. Paul went through a series of illnesses and accidents that prevented him from singing for several years. Ordinary people might have given up in these circumstances, but these are Heroes. They picked themselves up, stood up before the risk of failure and humiliation, and kept trying.
Inspiration
The media has made much of the initial scorn directed towards Susan Boyle – The message, “You’re unattractive, so we won’t like you.” But that isn’t how I see it. I watch the instant change from skepticism to adoration in the Talent audience, and I don’t see bad, prejudiced, judgmental people. I see people who needed inspiration and found it. I see an immediate recognition and acceptance of beauty that made physical appearances irrelevant. I see how one Hero can make a difference in the lives of thousands, then millions, then hundreds of millions.
I see this because I went to a Mensa party in San Diego, and the people there just had to share Susan Boyle’s performance for those of us who do normally live in caves. Lori learned about the performance from a blog on “five inspirational videos”. In case we’d missed it, my sister-in-law sent me a link she’d gotten from her sister.
One act, hundreds of millions of people touched. By the way, Susan’s choice of material was inspired. The judges on Britain’s Got Talent ask each contestant, “What’s your dream?” Performing “I Dreamed a Dream” is certainly a response to that! I’ve listened to her performance 5 or 6 times now, and each time I am moved and energized by it.
Heroes Got Have Talent
“We aren’t all Susan Boyles and Paul Pottses,” you may be thinking. They’re clearly extraordinary individuals. But this isn’t a story about where they are now; it’s about how they became what they are. Because they didn’t start out as stars either. They began as individuals who loved singing and kept doing it, and getting training, and trying over and over to become noticed, until finally they did.
We hear about the odds, that 50,000 people auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent, and only one person wins each year. Well, those aren’t the real odds. There are about 61 million people in the United Kingdom. That means that less than 1 out of 1000 even tried to get on the show. The others self-selected themselves out of the running. You don’t win by failing to try. You succeed by pushing and learning and working and taking risks. You succeed by going out there and doing things you believe in.
We all have that power to inspire. All we have to do is to take stock of our own skills and talents, work to nurture and strengthen them, then dare to stand up and show the world what we have. It might start with helping one person with a small project, or singing in a local chorus, or even writing a blog article. At first only a few people will notice, but if you inspire them, they will remember it. Maybe they’ll find a way to pass on the story, or maybe it will help them to create inspiration of their own. But the wave will spread and it will be good.
That is why we started The School for Heroes. Everyone here has some talent, some skill. The Band of Bards is specifically about performance, but all Heroes perform when the time comes. Paladins “perform” by helping people, but also literally stand before an audience at times. Warriors lead, and that doesn’t just mean walking in front. It also means using words to convince others to do what needs to be done. Wizards teach; that’s a performance too.
But most importantly, we dream, and we work to fulfill those dreams. The School is designed to help each of us understand who we are, what we believe in, and how to make our dreams become reality.
Dream the Dream
It doesn’t have to stop there. The Ars Heroica is currently seen by a few hundred Hero students and other visitors. But each one of us has the power to multiply that audience. When you see an article that moves you the way Susan Boyle and Paul Potts moved their listeners, pass it on. Post a link to it in response to another blog. Mention it on your Facebook page. Work with other students to create a video illustrating the ideas and post it to YouTube. Email a few friends and link them the article that might start to change their lives. You have so much more power than you realize!
So what is your dream? What is the one thing that you want to accomplish more than anything else? Find your passion, live your dream, and make it real. It won’t be easy. You’ll have to do a lot of hard work. You may face ridicule and rejection. But believe in your dream and maybe, some day, you can inspire people as much as Paul Potts and Susan Boyle.
Tags: Heroism, Life Advice
Posted in Featured, Life Advice | 2 Comments »
Thursday, November 6th, 2008
This is a momentous time. The United States has just elected Barack Obama as our next President. The obvious “change” there is that we elected a black man, but that’s a side note. More important to me is that we have chosen a highly intelligent, very well educated thinking person as President; but that’s secondary too. The real change is a commitment to change, the realization that we can’t just keep on doing things the way we’ve done them for centuries. And it’s a statement that we need to be open to change within ourselves to prosper and succeed.
Here’s a quote from Mr. Obama’s nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last August:
“I get it. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don’t fit the typical pedigree, and I haven’t spent my career in the halls of Washington. But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me; it’s about you.”
It’s about us. For the last eight years, American politics has been about “them”. It’s been about reacting to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. It’s been about reacting to the fear of possible “weapons of mass destruction” and a despotic regime in Iraq. It’s about counting on our government to protect us from the outside world and keep us safe. But it hasn’t been about protecting our quality of life, or about individuals taking responsibility to improve their own lives or to make the world a better place.
Well, now it’s about us. It is a time for change, but the change must come from within each of us. It is a time to take individual action, a time for hard work, and a time for Heroes.
A Book for Heroes
John F. Kennedy once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Barack Obama said something similar Tuesday night, “I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.” It may be uncomfortable in a nation of luxury and entitlement, but we all have to help to make change happen. The nice thing is, as we work to help the world, we grow stronger as individuals.
What do we mean by that? We recently read a book that is changing our lives – and it might change yours – in very positive ways. The book is “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” by Carol S. Dweck, PhD. Ms. Dweck is a Professor of psychology at Stanford University and a researcher “in the fields of personality, social psychology, and developmental psychology.”
At its heart, Mindset is a very straightforward, single-topic book about the advantages of having a “growth mindset.” The author defines a “fixed mindset” as a belief that what you are is what you will be. You’re athletic or not. You’re smart or dumb. You’re good at art or have no talent. A “growth mindset” is the belief that you can learn and improve any area of your life – If you suck at calculus or basketball or playing the piano, that just means you need to work harder at learning and getting better at it. People who have a “growth mindset” – and apply it to how they live their lives – are much more successful and effective in every area of life than those who have a “fixed mindset.” It’s a simple idea, and I had heard it before, but an incredibly powerful one.
If Mindset is a one-idea book, why do we think you should all read it? It has to do with… mindset. The fixed mindset is all about taking the easy way out. The previous paragraph gave you the “easy way” version of mindset. You didn’t have to work for it; it got handed to you. One of the things we learned from Mindset is that learning doesn’t work that way. We grow by making a commitment to growth, accepting that we can do very difficult and challenging things, then working towards them step by step. When we’ve been exposed too much to the fixed mindset, it’s easy to see work as a negative thing. If we were truly smart, we wouldn’t have to work to learn something new or to accomplish something important. That mindset can work great when we’re being successful, but it has no coping strategy for challenges or failures.
Mindset contains dozens of examples of people with fixed and growth mindsets, and of studies that demonstrate how much more effective people who apply the growth mindset are. Some of those examples are absolutely astonishing! How about the teacher in Chicago who gets all the “failed” troublemaking kids and refuses to treat them as losers? By the end of the year, every student is reading well. By the time they’re in 5th or 6th grade, they’re reading Chekhov, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Socrates – and loving it. They get there step by step and by not having the option to quit when things get tough.
How about the idea of encouraging children by avoiding criticism and telling them how smart they are? That’s great, right? According to multiple research studies cited by Dweck, it’s a disaster! Children – and adults – learn by our mistakes and by being challenged. Children who did well on a test and were told they were really smart saw no reason to study. When they later did poorly on a harder test, they were devasted – “If doing well means I’m smart, then failing means I’m stupid.” They had no coping method and no tools for growth.
Children who were given the same series of tests, but were told, “You must have worked really hard to do so well on that test,” had a totally different experience. They too had trouble on the harder test, but they interpreted their failure differently – “I did poorly on that test, so I’ll have to work harder so I can do better next time.” With that simple change in mindset, these children continued to learn and did much better on the retest.
We Hope You’ll Change Your Mind
Now, you might not think that applies to you. Readers of this blog are probably really intelligent, well-educated people. There’s a good chance you read challenging works of literature, philosophy, or science. Well, if that’s the case, you could be in even greater danger! Thinking you’re smart by genetics or education makes it easy to think, “I’m brilliant because I succeeded at something. The moment I fail, I’ll stop being brilliant. It’s safer not to try at all.” You need to reinterpret yourself and take the attitude that, “I did great work on that project!” instead. That way you will reinforce the growth mindset and continue to work, learn, take risks, and grow. That’s why we think you should read Mindset, really thinking about the ideas and examples in it, and work to apply them in your own life.
I (Corey) remember a conversation, early in my career as a programmer. Someone asked me why I was willing to work long, crazy hours. I said, “Work is all about learning. I learn something new every day. If I ever stop learning new things at a job, it’s time to move on.” I used to get really embarrassed when someone said to me, “You must be really smart” or “You’re a genius!” because I felt I was just having fun learning new things. Unfortunately, somewhere in there I think I started believing the compliments and maybe forgot a little about how much real work it takes to create great software.
What do you do when you’ve been on the top of the world, a success, a star? Especially what do you do when you then have a couple of projects that are canceled, or that simply fail? What happens next depends on your mindset. If you believe that “success = brilliance,” then clearly “failure = stupidity.” Guess what, you’re now a has-been. You don’t dare start any new projects or take any big risks because they might not succeed and gasp! you might discover that you were a one-hit wonder. There, safe, whew!
What I learned from Ms. Dweck’s book is that being “safe” is the real failure. Every great accomplishment comes from incredibly hard work and the flexibility to keep learning and growing while you’re working at it. If you lose the growth mindset, you lose everything. Mindset came to me as a badly-needed kick in the ass.
That doesn’t mean I won’t screw up. It’s very easy to slide back into laziness. Even when you do everything exactly right, failure is always a possibility. But with the growth mindset, failure is just the start of a new opportunity. It’s a lesson and a chance to grow. Learning isn’t comfortable… but it’s fun. Hard work can be stressful… but it’s a lot less stressful than knowing you aren’t accomplishing anything. “Meaning” can be hard to come by, but it’s really rewarding when you find it and work for it.
A School for Change
By the way, The School for Heroes isn’t a “fixed” place either. It’s a living, growing site that will constantly be changing and adding new features. Within the next few weeks we’ll let you edit your personal page (you can already add a personal statement), view a roster of the students in each class, get to your Heroic assignments, let your friends know about your hero class and how to take the test, and much more. Soon we’ll have a forum where you can talk to other heroes-in-progress and discuss your work, plans, and ideas.
Of course, Lori and I have a lot of work to get all that done. We’re eagerly taking on the challenge and watching our hard work slowly turn into a real school for – and of – heroes. We hope you’ll all stay with us and take the missing features as challenges and growth opportunities. From a fixed mindset, every missing feature is a failure – The school obviously needs all those things. From the growth mindset, each one is an exciting opportunity for growth and change. The School for Heroes will never be a static site and you are all essential to helping it grow and become what it promises to be.
Read Mindset, please. Its message is both powerful and important. We live in a momentous time, a time for change, a time for heroes. Can we really make a difference – in ourselves and in the world around us? To quote our new President-Elect, “Yes, we can!”
Tags: Change, Obama, School for Heroes
Posted in Featured, School for Heroes | 12 Comments »
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
A recent article in Game Developer magazine (August 2008 edition, page 34) had us saying, “Yes! Tell it like it is!”. Actually, the article was a standard “What went right and what went wrong” article about developing an adventure game. It was the sidebar by Penny Arcade co-creator Jerry “Tycho” Holkins that really caught our attention:
“If we had known what we were getting into, we would never have done it. Game development is an endless Sisyphean nightmare warren of terrible nightmares. We wish we could go back in time, to our first meeting with Hothead, and shake our past selves, crying out: “Run, fools! Run for your very lives! Game development is a nightmare warren,” et cetera. We would spend a lot of time driving home this nightmare warren concept.” – Tycho
[Incidentally, we view Penny Arcade almost every day. Check out their unique blend of sardonic humor as they discuss the ins and outs of Games and the Game Industry.]
We often have starry-eyed young game players come up to us and ask, “What does it take to become a Game Designer, O Great Ones?” (although they usually don’t phrase it quite that way). This is much like a son, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, asking, “What did you do in the Clone Wars, Daddy?” We put our arm on their shoulders (ok, Corey does that… Lori’s too short), smile condescendingly, and say, “Son, it takes Moxie. Moxie, hard work, and luck.” Then we pat them on the back and send them on their way with such sage advice as “Study Hard”, “Get Good Grades”, and “May the Force Be with You”.
What we don’t say to those innocent dreamers is that game development takes all the sweat from more work than you ever thought you were capable of doing. It takes the blood from opening up your creative heart and watching it all spill out upon the cutting room floor. It takes the tears of frustration and agony as you try to deal with impossible people doing impossible tasks under impossible deadlines. It also takes selling your soul to the Devil.
We don’t say it because:
- A. We don’t like scaring people
- B. We’d like to play their games someday
- C. We get a kickback from the Devil for every soul we get to sign on the dotted line
“There are a few things we wish we had known beforehand. First, not to make video games – but we covered that…” – Tycho
Why is game development so hard? We start out with a set of vague concepts about the game style and features, then spend months or years creating art and music, prototyping then refining the code, and gradually putting it all together. I can tell you that we were in total despair over a few of our games just three months before shipment because they felt bland and lifeless. Then the music and sound effects were added, and suddenly the games took on life. Still, even after a year or three of work, we’re never really sure we’ve created a great game until the fans come back and tell us we managed it.
The Horror! The Horror!
You might have heard horror stories about months-long crunch periods of 60 and 70 hour weeks to complete a game. The situation is industry-wide; almost all game companies have similar horrible overtime periods. But you may wonder why. I know we have at times… usually when we are in the middle of pulling an all-nighter.
What it all comes down to is that game development is an inherently chaotic process. We are trying to create an experience that has a certain feel and flavor, but our tools have no built-in intelligence. We have to draw every pixel, write every word of dialogue, and program every interaction. We create shortcuts for some of this, such as art tools that let us draw a polygon and apply a texture to it, object-oriented programming tools that let us specify a class of behavior for certain types of objects, and so on… but in the end, almost everything needs to be hand-tweaked, tested and retested for play balance, and finally reluctantly released to the playing public.
“… coming in as people who ordinarily just buy entertainment software, we didn’t understand that a project doesn’t actually look like anything until the very end. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that our game would be about grey blocks stumbling around a featureless world.” – Tycho
On the rare occasions when we get ahead of schedule, we use the extra time – and more – to add more features or to further tune the game play. Then, inevitably, many of the bugs and play balance problems show up only when we think the game is finished in the final phases of testing. This is of course because our characters are nothing but “grey blocks” for most of the development phase – The testers can’t really put a game through its paces until it’s almost finished.
No Pain – No Game?
Is it possible to create a great game without pain? In short, “no.” The pain can be reduced, and the overtime spread out a little, but a game produced strictly “by the book” on schedule is almost always a boring, flat-feeling game. That’s because game development is all about passion and chaos and “endless Sisyphean nightmare warrens.”
So, our advice to all you wannabe Game Designers really should be “don’t give in the the Dark Side of the Force.” But since no one ever takes that advice, don’t worry. We know a dandy lawyer who will be happy to write you up a Game Development contract. Don’t be too concerned if he asks you to sign it in blood. In triplicate.
Have fun!!!!!
Tags: Game Design, Humor
Posted in Featured, Game Design | 10 Comments »
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
“We were playing a game.” “No game.” – Joel Rosenberg, The Sleeping Dragon, 1982.
Dungeons & Dragons™ is the most important game introduced in the last 50 years. Without it, the landscapes of both live and computer gaming would look totally different. It’s certainly been influential to us. Our games wouldn’t exist at all without the influence of Dungeons and Dragons. There’s a very good chance Corey would still be designing productivity software if we had never discovered Dungeons and Dragons. Lori would still be a schoolteacher, and we’d never have met each other.
World of Warcraft would not exist without Dungeons and Dragons. Nor would Everquest, Ultima Online, Zork, any other text or graphic adventure video game, nor thousands of others. I don’t think we could say that about any other modern game. Exaggeration? I don’t think so.
What Makes Dungeons and Dragons Different?
How is Dungeons and Dragons different from playing Cops & Robbers, or Knights & Knaves, or from Lord of the Rings? Dungeons and Dragons has rules and structure. Characters have specific abilities and restrictions. A player can’t say “I leap over the 50 foot chasm” and expect it to work… unless they know how to fly. They might be able to say, “I cast a Fireball,” if there character happens to know the Fireball spell and has one ready. So a Dungeons and Dragons character can do a lot of things the player can’t do in real life and can’t do thing just because they make a good story.
Another critical aspect of Dungeons and Dragons is the concept of experience levels and experience points (XP). These have been adopted by most current role-playing games. We used a different system in Quest for Glory – individual skills and talents that improved with practice – but that really is just a variation on the XP theme. For all practical purposes, Dungeons and Dragons invented the idea of playing a single character with skills that improve over the course of many sessions of playing that same character. Since then, almost every role-playing game has been built around that concept. That’s pretty revolutionary!
Storytelling and D & D
But Dungeons and Dragons isn’t just about the rules. It’s also about playing a game where storytelling is as important as the game mechanics. A couple of Corey’s Bard characters come to mind. Each of them wrote a song about one of their adventures. In one case, our low-level party took on a much more powerful creature with the help of some magic. It could have been just another hack-and-slash moment, but the Bard immortalized it in song as “The Slaying of the Remorhaz” (giving himself a starring role, of course). Similarly, Carolan wrote a song, “You Can’t Keep Carolan Down,” about her adventures. Turning the gaming into a story has helped us remember that campaign many years later.
What makes Dungeons and Dragons so memorable? It’s the characters, the story, and the interaction between the players. We brush aside the boring parts, “Um, let’s see. I get +1 to hit from 16 Strength. Oh, wait, that’s damage, not to hit…” We remember matching wits with a Master Vampire, organizing a village to stand up against an ancient Red Dragon… or making a deal with the Dragon to stop attacking the village. We remember joining together to face an enemy that would have totally destroyed any one of us alone. This is the stuff of great storytelling made all the richer because we are participating in the story and helping to write it.
More than a Game
Dungeons & Dragons is the “more than a game” that helped us to write our own life story. How about you? Have you been influenced by Dungeons and Dragons or other “paper role-playing” games? How did it change your life? Or do you think I’ve exaggerated its importance, and there would still be lots of fun computer and video games if Dungeons and Dragons had never existed? We want to hear from you.
Tags: D&D, Game Design
Posted in Featured, Game Design | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
Yes, we all love games. It’s just that we don’t always try to figure out why we love a particular amusement, and more importantly, what made it so interesting. In this series, we take a look at some of our favorites and try to figure out what we can learn from their design.
Bridge – Playing With a Full Deck
Corey was a chess nut until his second year of College. At that point, he realized he couldn’t keep up with young players who had much more time and willingness to study openings. After a couple of years of computer games, Corey was introduced to bridge and has been playing it ever since.
What’s to Love About Bridge?
Two things epitomize the appeal of bridge – partnerships and duplicate play. Bridge can be played for money and makes a great skill-based cash game with an element of luck. But amateur play for master points is far more popular, which helps keep the cost of play low. This is much different from Poker, a “money management game resolved by cards,” which is almost pointless without having real money at stake. Bridge involves deep thought, partnership communication within the very limited vocabulary of the game, and imagination to cope with the opponents’ unknown hands. It also has a subtle learning curve in that a beginner will sometimes get lucky against an expert, but knowledge and practice pay off in the long run.
Another advantage of bridge is that the playing equipment is readily available, fits in a shirt pocket, and is very inexpensive. In duplicate bridge, each pair plays the same hands as their opponents, removing most of the “luck of the deal” aspect from the game. That brings skill and good judgment to the top.
What’s Not to Love About Bridge?
Rubber bridge requires exactly four players. A team game needs an even multiple of eight players to avoid having players sit out. Duplicate bridge usually requires at least 16 players, and is more fun with 32 or more. That’s a lot of players to get together in one place at one time, and without careful planning, there’s a good chance that 1-3 players won’t get to play at all or will have to sit out at some point.
Online play helps with this – In a large online bridge club, you can usually find a partner and opponents fairly quickly. However, if you end up with an incompatible partner – either a bad player, one who doesn’t know your bidding system, or one with bad manners – bridge can be excruciating and you may be stuck with that partner for four or eight hours. It is also very hard to prevent cheating at bridge because of the hidden cards. Online, a pair could be sitting next to each other or talking on the phone or instant messaging. Even in live play, subtle differences in timing, arrangement of cards, or even of the scorekeeping pencils, can give one pair an unfair advantage over their opponents.
What Can We Learn from Bridge?
A game shared trumps a game played alone. It doesn’t take gambling to make a card game fun. Nor does it take a huge number of different cards. Like chess, bridge thrives on elegance and simplicity. Random starting positions make every hand different, so no two bridge deals are quite alike. Deal duplication reduces the element of luck so that players benefit from practice and skill. Duplication also lets players discuss deals after the game – Often the post mortem is as fun as the tournament. Corey used to say that Bridge and Dungeons & Dragons were the only two games he knew in which players spent more time talking about the games afterwards than they spent actually playing them. The enjoyment doesn’t end when the game is over.
Tags: Game Design
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Friday, August 1st, 2008
Let’s face it – We get a little compulsive when it comes to gaming. Of course, some games are more compelling than others. Here are a few of our favorite card and board games, past and present, and some of the game design lessons we’ve learned from them.
Chess – The Classic Board Game
Why has this simple board game survived for thousands of years and remained popular today? Everything is out in plain sight, there are only 6 types of pieces, and the board is a boring 2-dimensional checkerboard of black and white squares. If we proposed a game like this to a publisher today, we’d get laughed out of the building.
What’s to Love About Chess?
That very simplicity is a virtue. You can learn all of the rules in an hour and start playing immediately, yet there are deep strategies that take months or years to acquire. Chess only needs two players, so it’s easy to find a game. The equipment is inexpensive and durable. The best player tends to win (or at least hold the game to a draw), but a less-experienced player always has the chance to come up with a strong winning combination. There are strong national and international chess federations to rate players, hold tournaments, and help players find opponents.
What’s Not to Love About Chess?
Especially in tournaments, a single chess game can take hours to play. In fact, a typical open chess tournament consists of 5 or 6 games. One big mistake in any game can result in a loss that takes you out of contention.
This has been partially solved by use of the chess clock. In a tournament game, it prevents one player from agonizing for hours while his opponent suffers. There are also speed chess games in which each player only has 10 – or 5 or 2 – minutes in which to make all her moves. Speed Chess is a very exciting variant in which both players are likely to make mistakes. Chess also requires a lot of memorization, particularly of opening sequences, to play well. It’s “open” nature (no hidden information) has resulted in exhaustive analysis of opening sequences, which detracts from the creative aspect of that part of the game.
What Can We Learn from Chess?
Games don’t have to be complicated to be fun. Clear rules and a small number of possible “moves” that interact to allow deep strategy can make great games. It also helps that chess is a 2-player game. That makes it easy to find a single opponent and gives a “dueling” quality to a chess game. Chess also benefits from great publicity and online play ability due to the simplicity of the rules and game transcripts. When Electronic Arts first started out, their catch-phrase was “Simple, Hot, and Deep.” That describes Chess perfectly.
Tags: Game Design
Posted in Featured, Game Design | 2 Comments »
Thursday, July 10th, 2008
I suppose that it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call this the “Class of the Titans,” but the Golden School is that “he who has the gold runs the school.” So we’ll class-ify ourselves as above average, and school ourselves to get back to the subject at hand – the Making of the “School for Heroes.”
Over the past few weeks, Lori has been working feverishly on creating www.TheSchoolForHeroes.com web site. She’s using the “grunge look” so that there is a lot of background detail behind everything on the page. Besides looking cool, this will give us the opportunity to sneak some hidden puzzles into the site. Meanwhile, Corey is creating an interactive “What kind of hero are you?” quiz to help our players/members decide on the character classes that best fit them for the school.
“Character class” is an old role-playing term, but it has a double-meaning when we’re talking about a school for heroes. The game characters will be assigned to a “class” such as Warrior, Wizard, or Paladin, then will take classes in that subject. Instead of just puzzles, we’ll have class assignments. Of course, the classes and assignments are all about fun, not busy-work!
Did you ever have one special teacher who really made you enjoy a class in school? That teacher probably gave you unusual assignments that really made you think about the subject material. One of Corey’s favorite teachers was Mr. Cross, an 8th grade math teacher. One day, when he saw that Corey was a little bored with the standard material, Mr. Cross asked him to stay a few minutes after class. Pulling out a College workbook on probability theory, he told Corey, “You might find this interesting.” A lifelong fascination with probability and chance began that day. By the way, Corey highly recommends “Lady Luck” by Warren Weaver if you’re interested in the subject.
Lori had a great high school English teacher, Mrs. Eades. This was the first time Lori really felt special in a class. Mrs. Eades went out of her way to encourage the talented students and make the class fun for them. Lori was inspired to continue studies in creative writing in College and to become a schoolteacher. Without Mrs. Eades’s encouragement, Lori might never have become a professional game writer.
The School for Heroes is full of special teachers for exceptional students. Everyone has the chance to show that they are heroes inside, and the teachers recognize and encourage this. They will go out of their way to make all of the classes fun, to create unique and challenging assignments, and to mold their students into true heroes. Have you done your Wizard homework lately? One of your assignments might be to search the school for hidden messages that can only be revealed by use of the Sense Magic spell you learned in the last class session. Of course it gets even more fun when you discover that not all of the secret messages out there were placed by your teacher. There are many secrets to discover in the School for Heroes.
So that’s what The School for Heroes is all about – a place where the true heroes live, laugh, love, and learn in an exciting, challenging, and above all fun environment. We hope to see you there with the other great heroes! We’ll be sure to send you to the head of the class.
Tags: Game Design, Humor, School for Heroes
Posted in Featured, Game Design | 2 Comments »
Friday, July 4th, 2008
Well, it’s Independence Day, more commonly known as the Fourth of July, here in the United States. It’s a time for fireworks and fun, hot dogs and burgers on buns, and terrible puns on the blog. We hope you’ll get a char-ge out of this and that we haven’t made ashes of our shelves.
When you’re hot, you’re hot, and we’re really fired up about this hot topic. So here’s a warm welcome to you all – we’re here to fan the flames of fandom for our Interactive Fiction.
Unfortunately, just last week, our hot dog, Zeus, was barking up a storm – a thunderstorm. It seems his namesake was tossing lightning and thunderbolts all around us. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and it was “Fire on the Mountain” “Smoke on the Water,” and “Dust in the Wind.” It was a hot time in the old town that night.
Corey of course sought to chill out in the World of Warcraft. The hot event there is the Midsummer Festival, where feeding fire spirits and throwing torches helped to light up the Summer skies. It certainly sparked his interest for a while.
Meanwhile Lori was filled with a burning desire to blaze some trails with new artwork for the upcoming School for Heroes web site. She designed blazons (coats of arms) for the four – or is it five? 
– classes in the hero school. Only the mages get to play with fire, but Corey thinks all the designs are cool. Lori has also been burning the midnight oil creating other hot stuff for the Hero School site.
First, of course, we have to survive the baptism by fire that’s involved in learning a new game system, designing five games in one, and building a community on TheSchoolForHeroes.com web site. We’re already burning the candle at both ends making the game sizzle. It will take a lot of slow cooking to make the game sparkle before we’re ready to burn the final disks.
On a lighter note, have a happy Fourth of July, and hopefully when it comes to our game – you’re fired. (Up, that is…) Just don’t flame us or rake us over the hot Coles.
Tags: Humor, Interactive Fiction
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